August 15, 2014

WHAT DO FERGUSON, MO AND 9/11 HAVE IN COMMON?

So are the people grieving over the unarmed black teen Michael Ferguson are terrorists? That would explain why the footage from the mainly peaceful protests demanding only information about another senseless killing have been met by a police force that looks more and more like the military combat--with combat gear, tear gas, rubber bullets, attack dogs and flash grenades. Can we get some sarin gas in there? Our police force is getting beefed up by expensive military equipment by the federal government. I guess if there's not much war overseas, government officials is happy to silence any protest or dissent and declare war on the people who elected it. You gotta keep those weapons manufacturers paid. Just as our kids can get gunned down in schools in Sandy Hook and nothing gets done because the government wouldn't dare give a crap about the safety of white or black children if it cuts into gun manufacturers' profits. And it isn't just in Ferguson. It was at Occupy Wall Street protests around the country. The scope is ludicrous.

"So we have had the absurd spectacles of $100 million in counter-terrorism funds going to South Dakota (pop. 833,000), a BearCat patrolling a pumpkin festival in New Hampshire, and $90,000 spent on bollards and surveillance at the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres’ spring-training facility. And now we have protesters in a St. Louis suburb being confronted with exo-skeletal defenders of the peace who look like they arrived straight from the Maidan or Tahrir Square."

And while there is no shortage of funds to patrol the sinister, seditious types who assemble at a pumpkin festival--A PUMPKIN FESTIVAL--and Ferguson has received tens of millions in riot control and combat gear, the school in St. Louis which Michael Brown had only two robes to share between all graduating seniors. So here's a kid who made it through a tough neighborhood and was on his way to college and he's gunned down. And if locals demand answers, they are treated like enemy combatants. The police and government's message is the same: We're going to kill you, harass you, defund your schools, social security offices, veterans' hospitals, post offices, etc. And if you complain--we'll attack you!

DAILY KOS: "Mike's graduation photograph was taken in March 2014, still many months ahead of when he would be able to graduate in August. Imagine the "why" of this fact:The grinding poverty in Mike's world only allowed Normandy High School to acquire two graduation gowns to be shared by the entire class. The students passed a gown from one to the other. Each put the gown on, in turn, and sat before the camera to have their graduation photographs taken. Until it was Mike's turn.

What kind of American school would have to share robes across the entire senior class? The kind that's been the subject of a lot of attention from the state board of education.

This district was created by merging two of the poorest, most heavily minority districts around St. Louis—Normandy and Wellston. The poverty rate for families sending their kids to Normandy Schools was 92 percent. At Wellston School District, the poverty rate was 98 percent. Every single student in the Wellston district was African American.

Still, the state education board voted to merge the districts in 2010 (the first change to state school district boundaries in thirty-five years). Plagued by white flight, crashing property values that destroyed tax revenues, and a loss of state funds as the better-off residents of the area sent their children to private schools, the resulting district isn't just short of gowns, it's short of everything. Residents of the district voted again and again to raise their own property taxes, until their rates were actually the highest in the state, but a higher percentage of nothing was still nothing, and district revenues trended steadily down."

We've always got money for weapons. School supplies? Well, not when there are "terrorists" at unruly pumpkin festivals to reign in. Please complain while you still can, and bring your cellphones to film it.Those War-Ready Cops in Ferguson Are 9/11's Awful Legacy—and Your Taxes Are Paying for ItMORE; NEWREPUBLIC.COM